Pages

Sunday, December 22, 2013

NBC’S CRITICALLY BELOVED ‘HANNIBAL’ TO RETURN FOR SECOND SEASON FRIDAY, FEB. 28 AT 10 P.M.

Intense Match of Wits Between Dr. Hannibal, Will Graham Continues With 13 New Episodes

UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. — Dec. 19, 2013 — NBC has announced it will
premiere the 13-episode second season of the critically acclaimed drama
“Hannibal” at 10 p.m. (ET/PT) Friday, Feb. 28 following “Grimm” after
the previously-announced conclusion of the 10-episode run of “Dracula.”

From creator Bryan Fuller, “Hannibal” stars Mads Mikkelsen as
brilliant psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lector, who is working with the FBI
and gifted criminal profiler Will Graham, played by Hugh Dancy, to look
into the mind of serial killers. Based on Thomas Harris’ best-selling
novels, this series is the prequel to the story that began with the
feature films “Red Dragon” and “Silence of the Lambs.”
The series also stars Laurence Fishburne as Jack Crawford, the head
of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit. Caroline Dhavernas and Hettienne
Park also co-star.

“Bryan and his team are running on all creative cylinders once again
and have delivered episodes full of intrigue, scares and surprises,”
said Jennifer Salke, President, NBC Entertainment. “The show continues
to astound us with its incredible aesthetic beauty and its amazingly
talented cast.”

Vulture.com rated “Hannibal” as the second best show on all of
television — broadcast or cable — in 2013, calling it “a daring series,”
and adding “This is the most visually and atmospherically striking
network series since “‘Twin Peaks.’” The Chicago Sun-Times added that
“Hannibal” is “deliciously disturbing and is bound to leave viewers
hungry for more.”

TV critic Alan Sepinwall of HitFix.com said “Hannibal” had an
“amazing first season of television.” The New York Post said, “The
series is the most beautifully shot and produced show on network TV.”

“Hannibal” is from Gaumont International Television in association with Sony Pictures Television Networks.

The series is also produced by Dino De Laurentiis Company and Living Dead Guy Productions.
In addition to Fuller, Martha De Laurentiis, Steven Lightfoot, Chris
Brancato, Katie O’Connell, Elisa Roth, Sidonie Dumas and Christophe
Riandee also serve as executive producers.

Monday, October 28, 2013

Please support NBC's Hannibal TV series by voting on this poll so it gets first place. Voting ends October 30th at 11 PM EST, so keep those fingers clicking til then! You can vote for up to four shows at a time, but remember to include Hannibal with each vote so it stays at the top. There is no limit for how much you can vote, so go crazy! The winner will be announced by Halloween.

We may not be the largest fanbase, but we are a very dedicated one so go show your support!

Thursday, August 22, 2013

When Hannibal returns for its second season, Will Graham will be in quite a bit of trouble.

Arrested and locked up for grievous crimes he never committed, Will (Hugh Dancy) needs a top-notch lawyer to help him regain his freedom. In steps Leonard Braver.

With such a high profile case, Braver is hoping that the proceedings could make his career, according to E!. Also, with such a strong case against him, no one else would want to touch his defense with a ten-foot pole.

However, Will knows he has been set up by Hannibal (Mads Mikkelsen), a carefully plotted deception that Will began to figure out in "Savoureux." According to series creator Brain Fuller, this moment of realization regarding Hannibal's character had to happen early in the shows intended seven-season arc.

"Because the audience knows from the first frame, before Hannibal is even onscreen that we are telling the story of Hannibal Lecter, who is going to be caught by Will Graham and incarcerated, Will had to figure Hannibal out in the first season," Fuller told the A.V. Club.

While Braver works to get Will released, the show writers will have to deal with having their protagonist locked up.

"That's the great thing about imagination is that Will's imagination can transport him out of [prison] and into places, cinematically, that will allow him to continue being a pivotal part of the story, even though he's locked up," Fuller said, according to the A.V. Club. "One of the things that was really interesting in the books, is the concept of Hannibal's memory palace, the place where he goes to survive incarceration with the virtual-reality system that exists between his ears. We'll be seeing Will create his own version of the mind palace over the course of the second season."

With that statement, it sounds like it will be quite awhile before Will breaths free air again.

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Collider: How did Hannibal come about? Was it something you had the idea for, or did the network come to you with this concept?
BRYAN FULLER: How it started was that I was on a fateful plane trip to New York. I had just finished a draft of a script and I was like, “I need to go see some shows on Broadway to cleanse my palate.” I happened to be on the plane with a friend of mine, who randomly was just sitting one row ahead of me and across the aisle. We were catching up and it was like, “Oh, we’re sitting close and we’re chatting!” She was like, “I just got this job to be the CEO of Gaumont U.S. TV, and one of the first properties we’re acquiring is the Hannibal Lecter character. Do you think there’s a TV series there?” Not even asking if I wanted to do it or if I was curious, at all, but I was like, “Yeah, just saying the name Hannibal, I’m curious.”

I read Red Dragon in high school and I was a fan of the Thomas Harris books, so my first question was, “Do you have the Will Graham character?” I feel like Clarice Starling was done so iconographically with Jodie Foster that that’s a pretty bar to reach. You had William Petersen and Ed Norton play Will Graham in previous incarnations of Red Dragon and Manhunter, but I always felt like there was so much more between the lines of Will Graham on the page than had ever been seen in the way that he was presented on screen. He’s such a complex character. What I loved about him, reading him, was that he has personality disorders and he has neuroses, but I felt like I didn’t really see those things as apparently on screen before. I thought, “God, if you have an empathy disorder and you’re putting yourself in the minds of serial killers to catch them, how damaging and traumatizing that would be.”

So, I was really interested in that character and how he existed on the page. I thought, “Well, what if there’s this relationship between Will Graham and Hannibal, that didn’t exist in the books?” In the books, Will Graham met Hannibal twice. He went to his office and asked him some questions, and then he went back again because he had a feeling about something he couldn’t quite put his finger on, and that’s when he realized that Hannibal was the man he was after and Hannibal gutted him with a carpet knife, but Will brought him down. So, they only really had two encounters, but there’s that line from Red Dragon where Hannibal says to Will Graham, “Do you know how you caught me?,” and Will Graham says, “Well, because you’re insane,” and Hannibal says, “No, you’re actually more like me than you care to admit,” or something along those lines.

There’s a section in the book where Alan Bloom, who’s now Alana Bloom, and Jack Crawford are talking, and they talk about how Will sometimes picks up the cadence of another person’s speech as he’s talking to them, which seemed to be indicative of some form of echopraxia. We’re all born with mirror neurons. We have a flood of them in our brains and it helps us socialize. When little babies are mirroring what they parents do, or what adults do, or anyone around them, those are the mirror neurons in the brain at work. As we get older and achieve our own identities, those mirror neurons are absorbed into the system and they don’t play as active a role. But, if you have echopraxia, they’re still pretty active and also prevent you from clearly establishing your own identity, or your own identity is a little bit slippery because you can shift in and out of it, depending on who you’re with. So, I just thought, “If he has a little bit of that and he has an empathy disorder and he has all of these things, he’s in danger, in these situations, just psychologically.” That’s a version of a crime story that I haven’t seen, that would be interesting to explore.

Since Hannibal really pushes the boundaries of what’s been seen on network TV, how do you gauge just how far you’ll take the violence on the show?
FULLER: I think it’s what feels right for the story. It’s also what’s right for the genre. Keep in mind that The Silence of the Lambs is a horror movie, and Hannibal is a horror anti-hero. To a certain point, we have to honor the genre and deliver certain elements of the genre. I love horror, fantasy and sci-fi. Those are my genres of love and devotion. So, as a member of that audience, I want to make sure that the other members of the audience are protected in getting certain things out of the show. I don’t think we could do a Hannibal that was too soft because it would have no business being on network television. We’re at a point in network TV where things are changing. Networks have to change because cable is now doing better ratings than most of the network shows, so they have to start adopting more of a cable model and a cable attitude. Networks are hemorrhaging viewers. CBS is always gonna be fine because it knows exactly who its demographic is and how to service that demographic. But, NBC has a great opportunity to be at the leading edge of evolving networks into a hybridization of a network-cable model.

Your three leads – Hugh Dancy, Mads Mikkelsen and Laurence Fishburne – are so fantastic on the show. What was your casting process like? Did you have any of them specifically in mind, or were you just open to any suggestions that were brought to you?
FULLER: I didn’t have who Will Graham was in mind. And then, our very first conversation with the network about who this should be was Hugh Dancy. There were three names that came up – Hugh Dancy and two other actors – and everybody said, “Let’s go to Hugh and see if he’s interested.” We just thought that he has an innate likeability and this character is very complex. Like it says in the book, “Fear makes Will Graham rude,” so he is anti-social and complicated and in his own world. You have to have somebody who has an innate likeability, otherwise they’re just going to come off like an asshole, and Hugh has that. You want to be invited into a world by an actor, and Hugh Dancy, as an actor, invites you in to the world that he’s inhabiting. So, that was a very clear, easy choice.

And based on getting Hugh, Mads was interested because they had worked together on King Arthur. They were friends. So, we sat down with Mads and pitched what the show was to him. Even in that very first meeting, he said, “So, this character is a bit like Lucifer. He sees the beauty in the world and in humanity, but is also punitive to those who don’t recognize beauty in the world and in humanity.” If you look at his performance, he is playing Lucifer, as opposed to Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal. I don’t think any of us wanted whoever we cast as Hannibal to go anywhere near Anthony Hopkins because you would be slain. There would just be no way to live up to that. So, we had to go a different direction with Hannibal. With Mads, who has this beauty, elegance and grace, and was a dancer, as well as having played several villains in prominent movies we had somebody who was going to bring something so unique to the role. Hannibal Lecter is not American. In the books, he is Eastern European, so he is other and he is different. So, getting a foreign actor to play the role was always at the front of my mind because I wanted to have some indication that he couldn’t be American.

Aside from the fact that the three leads are so interesting to watch individually, watching them interact with each other is just so fascinating.
FULLER: This is a stellar cast. It’s a feature film cast. One of the things that I was really attracted to, about this story, is the bromance between Hannibal and Will Graham. Here are two crazy men, who are so unique in their insanity that they need each other to understand themselves. That felt like a great place to tell a story, and to tell a different version of the Hannibal Lecter mythology. What we had been exposed to was essentially an incarcerated psychopath who had done his villainy, and everybody around him knew what he was capable of. And now, we have him peacocking in the open, and he is functional in society. He has relationships, and not only the relationship with Will Graham, but the relationship with Jack Crawford. I love seeing them friends, at the dinner table, laughing and raising glasses in toasts. And there’s the very touching relationship that he develops with Abigail Hobbs (Kacey Rohl), and how he feels very protective of her and responsible for what happened to her. I love that relationship, and the irony that she traded one cannibalistic father in for another, but she just doesn’t know it yet. I find that really satisfying. You get a great sense of a man who never thought he’d have friends or relationships, and then he’s discovering himself in circumstances where he is getting those opportunities and he is taking advantage of them, and we never know to what end. You’ll get an idea by the end of the season. It is fascinating to see someone who is making connections through their psycho-pathology.

When you know where most of these characters eventually end up, is that something you always have to keep in the back of your mind, or do you try not to think about that?
FULLER: It’s a huge gift to be able to know the destination of these characters and know that, in Season 4, we’re going to be telling the Red Dragon story. That’s a buoy that we’re swimming to, in the storyline. So, it’s exciting, on that level, to know that we have a destination, but we’re also mixing things up. Events that have happened in the books will happen, but they may not necessarily evolve all of the players that were involved because we are creating a new introduction to Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter that didn’t exist in the literature, and everything has a ripple effect. There will be folks that are hardcore fans of the novels who will say, “Oh, my god, they totally told that story, but they’re telling it with this character instead of that character, even though the events still happen.” I’m hoping that it is as satisfying to fans of the movies, as it is to fans of the literature, and also welcoming to new audiences who aren’t familiar with either of those properties.

Have you already given any thought about if or when Hannibal Lecter’s famous face mask will appear?
FULLER: Yeah, that would be Season 4-ish. We’ve got some fields to play in, before we get to Hannibal incarcerated, in all sorts of ways. We’ll definitely be getting there. Red Dragon was the first book in the series. Imagine that there are three novels that were unpublished, and we’re going to tell those three novels before Red Dragon. And then, we’ll try to sync up with the timeline of the other books.

With the change of gender for the Dr. Bloom role, did you just want to change that role to add a female character, or had you specifically wanted to work with Caroline Dhavernas again?
FULLER: Both, actually. It’s a pretty male world. You have William Graham, Hannibal Lecter and Jack Crawford, as your three leads. And then, there’s Alan Bloom and Freddy Lounds. Really, the only female character in Red Dragon, besides the blind woman is Beverly Katz, and you only see her for a little bit. So, I just thought that we need more female energy because I love writing for women and it was just too male. The piece needed women. So, when I was first developing the project, I called Caroline and I was like, “Okay, there’s two roles. The bottom line is that I want to work with you, so which of these roles sounds more interesting to you.” She was like, “Well, actually Alana Bloom sounds more interesting to me,” and I was like, “Great, it’s yours!” Then, we were so lucky to find Lara Jean Chorostecki. I had gotten the news that we were going ahead with Hannibal at NBC, as I was on a plane on my way to the U.K. Of course, all over London, at the time, there was Rebekah Brooks and the News of the World stuff going on, and I thought, “Wouldn’t that be interesting, if that was our Freddie Lounds,” as opposed to the sleazy tabloid reporter. She’s someone who’s a little savvier and a little more of a political animal, with those great shocks of red curly hair. I just saw Rebekah Brooks so clearly, as our Freddie Lounds. That’s where she’d be going, if she doesn’t get doused with kerosene, set on fire and be in a wheelchair, in Season 4.

Why did you decide to focus so strongly on the relationship between Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne) and his wife (Gina Torres)?
FULLER: If you’re a Thomas Harris fan and have read the books, you know that Jack’s wife is dying of cancer, and dies of cancer in The Silence of the Lambs. I really wanted to tell that story, and I also really wanted to work with Gina [Torres] again, having worked with her on Pushing Daisies. I was curious how people would react to that, ‘cause it’s a different story for the show. It’s a cancer story. It’s a departure from cannibalism, but it’s all faithful to the canon of the stories and where Jack Crawford would be by the timeline of The Silence of the Lambs. Also, it’s fascinating to see Hannibal (Mads Mikkelsen), who’s a cannibalistic killer, be so empathetic for someone who is having their life slip away. So, it was interesting to see that color from Mads, and I think Gina is amazing in those episodes.

How do you decide the meals that Hannibal Lecter will make and serve?
FULLER: We have a James Beard award-winning culinary consultant in José Andrés, who’s a world famous chef and has restaurants all over the country. I was a fan of Jose’s from going to his restaurants, and just being a viewer of Top Chef and being educated that way. I’m also a little bit of a foodie. So, one of my first thoughts about doing this was, “I want to work with José Andrés on this project, as the voice of Hannibal.” I called my agent and was like, “How do I get in contact with José Andrés?,” and they were like, “Well, we represent him and he actually just won an award and he’s having a cocktail reception at his restaurant in Los Angeles. Why don’t you come as my date and I’ll introduce you, and you can present the idea to him directly and see what he has to say?”

So, we went to his reception and they introduced me and I said, “Hi, I’m working on this adaptation of Hannibal Lecter as a TV series,” and he said, “Oh, I want to be a consultant!,” before I could even get the invitation out. He was so enthusiastic! He’s so passionate and infectious with his enthusiasm that he immediately pulls you in. He had so many ideas, right off the top. One of the very first ideas that he said to me, right there at the reception, was, “Lungs! You could do the lungs of a smoker. You would clean out the tar from the inside layer of the tissue. The smoke has been in there for awhile, so it gives you this flavor to the lungs. They would be pre-smoked.” It was fascinating to hear his lack of judgement. It was one of those things where it was like meat is meat is meat is meat, which I thought was very fair.

I only eat meat, if I go to a nice restaurant and there is an exceptional dish, or if I’m at somebody’s home for a dinner, I’ll eat whatever is in front of me. Otherwise, I don’t eat anything that walks around and has a face. I’m not doing it for health reasons, and I don’t have too large of a soapbox under my feet about it \because it’s a personal choice. If I go to your home and you’re cooking me a meal, I will eat whatever you put in front of me. So, it was interesting to hear this chef, who is world renowned, speak of eating people in the same manner that he would about eating a pig or a cow or a duck, without any kind of distinction between them as creatures of higher or lower intelligence.

One of the things that I always think about now is the emotional sophistication of animals and how much we’re learning about the emotional sophistication of animals. If you’re eating a pig, you’re essentially eating the equivalent of a four-year-old human being. A pig is actually much more intelligent than a four-year-old and much more emotionally sophisticated. I see both sides of the argument about why to eat meat and why not to eat meat, and it was refreshing to talk to José , who also was judgement free, in terms of making the distinctions.

You’re not really sure what to make of Hannibal Lecter for a few episodes. Was it intentional to play on that and make viewers wonder, if he really could be doing such horrible things?
FULLER: No. For me, it was like, “You know who he is.” I figured it was a chip that I could only play so often, so I didn’t want to overuse it. In Episode 3, when he rams Alana’s head into the brick wall, it’s the first time you’re like, “Oh, shit, he’s a bad guy!” Up until that point, he doesn’t really do anything on camera. You see him cooking the lungs in the first episode, but until he acts violently against another character, you realize how ruthless he is and how much of situational ethics come into play with him.

With the great and heartbreaking performance that Anna Chlumsky gave, it must have been difficult to let her go.
FULLER: I thought Anna did a wonderful job in the episode and was our Clarice Starling, but made it distinct from Jodie Foster, in her own way. That’s our The Silence of the Lambs episode, where we’re looking at the archetypes that have been previously established and said, “Yes, these archetypes are in our world, but not necessarily in the roles you’ve grown accustomed to.”

Is there any chance you’ll be exploring romantic relationships with Dr. Lecter?
FULLER: Oh, yeah, we absolutely are going to go there. There are two distinct flirtations that we’re playing with, and the intention is absolutely to go there with his character. I imagine he would be a fantastic lover. Mads and I have talked quite a bit about how Hannibal loves beautiful things, so he would love women and he would love a woman’s spirit. Unless she’s an asshole, she’s not in danger. So, that is absolutely going to be in the cards. I’m excited for those stories and the opportunity to see that other side of the character. We will see him in romantic situation, not necessarily in the first season, but the players are all set up in the first season.

How did Gillian Anderson come to be a part of the show?
FULLER: I loved working with her and writing for her. That was very much a career highlight, being able to work with her. I was such a huge fan of The X-Files. Beyond The X-Files, she was amazing as Miss Havisham (in Great Expectations). She’s a fantastic actress, and she’s great in the show, as Hannibal’s psychiatrist. Originally, the role was written for a much older actress that had retired because of age. Then, as we were talking about actresses and about who was appropriate, the casting person at NBC said, “Well, if you make the character younger, what do you think about Gillian Anderson?,” and I was like, “I’ll make the character younger.” So, I rewrote the character and the retirement hinged not on her leaving the industry because she’s of retirement age, but because of an event. Hannibal Lecter is her only patient because she retired and he is the only one who ignored her retirement. They have a very specific relationship around an event that we will explore over the course of the season, in a very subtle way, keying up a bigger story for them, down the road. What’s fascinating for me about having those actors in a scene is that they each have an icy control to them, but they’re both very sexy. You have these two cool, sexy people in an environment where they are talking about intimacy and deepest thoughts, so there’s this sexual tension that vibrates under their scenes, in a really nice way.

Pushing Daisies, Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me were all great shows that didn’t get as long of a life as they should have. When you saw what happened with Kickstarter for Veronica Mars, did it give you hope about reviving any of your past work?
FULLER: When I saw that announcement, I was like, “Oh, my god, this is amazing!” I emailed Rob Thomas immediately and said, “I have so many questions for you!” He was like, “I’m so swamped right now. Call me in two weeks and I’ll tell you all about it.” They’re slightly different playing fields because Veronica Mars is so much about the wit of the dialogue and the charm of the performers, and the style is a tonal issue, whereas Pushing Daisies is a world that we have to create. Veronica Mars exists in this world, through the lens of film noir, but Pushing Daisies doesn’t exist in this world, so we’d have to build it, which requires a lot more to produce than Veronica Mars would. So, I’m asking questions and seeing what is required and what we could do. It’s a different ball game, and I don’t know if it would be possible. It’s certainly easier to ask for $2 million of crowd funding, as opposed to $15 million. At that point, it begs all sorts of questions like, “Okay, shouldn’t we be contributing that money to a cancer foundation?” So, it’s a complicated issue, but it one that I am actively exploring and trying to find out if it is, at all, possible given what is required for a Pushing Daisies movie. I would love to return to that world, and I would love to return to that cast. It was a very satisfying, creative experience. I love that cast and would love to be on a stage with them again soon. I just have a lot of research to do and a lot of questions hat I need to get answered before I can determine if it’s realistic. But, yes, I would absolutely love it, I would make room for it, and I would make it a priority, if it is possible.

Saturday, July 27, 2013

There's only one place to start: Will vomits up an ear! Where did that idea come from?Bryan Fuller: [Laughs]
It was something that I knew was going to happen, even before I started
writing the pilot. The last run of episodes was going to [have] Will
Graham throwing up an ear, fearing that he had eaten somebody. Initially
it was a finger, [but] I just thought, 'There's not as much chew time
for a finger as there is an ear.' [Laughs] It was a really
great destination to drive to and one of those kind of sparks of
inspiration: Will Graham has to feel like he's become Garret Jacob Hobbs
in a complete way. And how horrific to think that somehow someone else
got inside you in a way that could only mean that you ate them?

It
was easy to assume Hannibal had framed Will, but did you think viewers
might actually wonder if Will had committed the murders?Fuller:
I wanted both of those things. We very carefully only showed pertinent
information to the audience. I wanted it to be unclear whether Will
could have done these things and also be unclear to Will Graham. Even
though he may have the convictions of his investigation, he still has
huge blank spots in his memory. But we essentially tell the audience
that when Will left Abigail Hobbs, she had an ear. And the last person
we saw her with both ears with was Hannibal.

Speaking of what we don't see, how did Hannibal get the ear in Will's stomach?Fuller: Hannibal is a wily guy. [Laughs]
As a storyteller, I have to have an answer in reality. On one hand, I
could see a version of Hannibal sneaking into Will's house with an ear
on a stick and pushing it down his throat. On the other hand, as a lover
of horror and sci-fi and quasi-supernatural storytelling, I love the
explanation that Hannibal is a devil. But that was not Thomas Harris'
intention. So, he has to have been physically able to accomplish that in
some manner. If we did something where it was sort of magical, then I
think we would lose our grip on reality. That's something I think is
very important to maintain, out of respect for the audience and also the
character and his origins. But in my mind, I love the greater mythology
of Hannibal being a very punitive devil.So, is he punishing Will?Fuller:
I think that everything that Hannibal has done to Will has been a
radical, unorthodox form of therapy. I would argue that all of the deeds
still come from a place of genuine care. He is trying to help Will see
himself better and get to a truer version of who Hannibal thinks Will
is. Even setting him up to take the fall for these murders has been an
act of therapy, in Hannibal's mind.

Are we to believe this was always Hannibal's master plan? Or does he just adapt very well?Fuller: I
think he has a very loose plan, but he's also quite adaptive. He
couldn't have predicted when he met Will that he was going to be
suffering from encephalitis. But once he smelled that on him, he knew
that, "Oh, this is going to be an interesting playing field for Will and
his perception of reality, so I'm going to take advantage of it."

Is it troubling how quickly Jack accepts that Will could be guilty of these crimes? Fuller:
Hannibal is playing off of Jack's intrinsic guilt over what's happening
to Will. From the get-go, [Jack] knew that he was taking a man out of a
classroom and putting him into a dangerous psychological situation. He
had no idea how dangerous it was, but the water was getting hot. Jack
was aware of the increase in temperature — he just didn't know that it
was going to be Will's brain that was boiling over. So, to deal with his
own guilt on that matter, it would be very easy for him to go to the
place of, "Will did it." All of the evidence is pointing that direction,
and clearly he has no reason to suspect Hannibal at this stage. We'll
see more in Season 2 of Hannibal's further manipulations of Jack
Crawford on that front.Jack conveniently comes in after Will accuses Hannibal of all the murders. Would Jack have been swayed if he had heard Will's thoughts?Fuller:
In Season 2, Jack will be investigating those accusations. I think
after Will woke up from getting shot by Jack and before he was put into
the institution, he shared his theories about Hannibal. Now it's up to
those characters and Hannibal Lecter to either support or deny those
accusations in a properly investigated way.

Do you intend to keep Will locked up for a while?Fuller:
He will be incarcerated, and we will be dealing with all of the threads
of that. We need to see all of the things happen that would happen in
that scenario. Will Graham needs to go on trial for the murders that he
may or may not have committed. Jack has to be brought before a review
board for his participation in what happened to Will, and Hannibal, as
Will's psychiatrist, is going to continue to try to help Will see the
truth that Hannibal wants him to see. The ball is up in the air in so
many ways for Jack and Hannibal and Will. The fun of Season 2 will be
spiking those balls.

Will Dr. Chilton get his organs put back inside himself and be trying to analyze Will's mind?Fuller: Yes. I would love to have a lot more of Raul Esparza and Dr. Frederick Chilton in Season 2. He will be a nemesis of sorts for Will in the institution.I loved the role reversal at the end. Fuller:
When I was breaking the pilot and thinking about where this goes, it
occurred to that Hannibal needs to win this round. Hannibal needs to
have everyone in the world think that Will Graham is a killer. And
therefore, it will be less work to get Will to believe that he is a
killer. I had always pitched in every conversation that ... the last
shot of the season is that iconic shot from Silence of the Lambs
where you're coming down the corridor toward the last cell on the left
and instead of finding Hannibal Lecter there, you find Will Graham. It
felt very poetic and it felt powerful and it felt full of promise. It
promised so much story, and now we get to deliver on it.

From
the beginning, you made it clear you were telling your own story, but
do you fear that this choice will alienate some of the diehard Red Dragon fans?Fuller: If
you look at the scant two pages that talk about Will Graham's back
story, they tell us that Will was so psychologically compromised from
investigating the Minnesota Shrike that he had to become
institutionalized. So, I feel like I've got a car jack and I've wedged
it in between those lines. I've just opened them up for room to tell
more between the lines than what you may have anticipated. But we're
also sticking to the canon. We will deliver what we've come to expect in
Red Dragon of Will Graham, but he'll just have a longer,
harder journey to get there. I gave myself room to wiggle, so we're
going to see some wiggling in the next two seasons.

Does Will have any allies at this point? Perhaps Alana (Caroline Dhavernas)?Fuller:
I think we'll see shifts in relationships. Will has always felt alone
and we've seen him victimized by his isolation in the first season. Now,
Will has to step up and defend himself and also be much more proactive
as a character because it is his life on the line. The tragedy for Will
is that he allowed himself to open up and get close to Hannibal, and now
he fears that that is the exact wrong person that he should have been
so intimate with. Hannibal has so clearly convinced all of those around
Will that Will could be capable of all of this. And Will has convinced everyone around him that he could capable of this by his own behavior.

Can Will distance himself from Hannibal, or will he have access to him as his attending psychiatrist?Fuller:
Hannibal will always want to be close to Will. He sees a great
potential in Will as this pure human being, and he's seduced by Will's
purity. He's attracted to it, and he's also very eager to conquer it in
some way.

Is Hannibal's obsession with Will also an attempt to more fully understand himself? Fuller: Hannibal's
absolutely on a journey of self-exploration, and he's fascinated by his
fascination with Will. He is curious about this change that's come over
him. It's sort of like somebody who is falling in love for the first
time and had never felt that was actually a possibility for them.
That's a fresh, unexplored territory for Hannibal that is exciting to
him and interesting to him. Maybe his ultimate downfall is his
attraction and affection for Will Graham.

But for now, Hannibal is on top.Fuller: Hannibal
Lecter has won this round, certainly. But one of the exciting things
moving forward with Season 2 is that Will has hit rock bottom. One of
the great gifts that the universe can give somebody in a tumultuous
state of mind is for them to hit rock bottom and be free. Now, Will has
nothing to lose, and he will be a very dangerous dance partner for
Hannibal Lecter.